Articles

Matt Weisfeld, author of The Object-Oriented Thought Process, Fourth Edition, discusses the advantages and hazards of using pointers to access and manipulate memory addresses directly. The risks are significant enough that some languages allow this feature, while others expressly prohibit it. What's so dangerous - and tantalizingly powerful - about pointer arithmetic?

Matt Weisfeld, author of The Object-Oriented Thought Process, Fourth Edition, travels through time to show the evolution of accessor methods to improve data security and integrity in both structured programming and object-oriented programming. Along the way, we learn about the mechanisms in place today to help produce robust and secure code.

Encapsulation is so fundamental to OO that it is one of OO design’s cardinal rules. Inheritance is also considered one of the three primary OO concepts. However, in one way, inheritance actually breaks encapsulation! How can this be? Is it possible that two of the three primary concepts of OO are incompatible with each other? Matt Weisfeld explores this possibility.